The term “machine to machine (M2M) communication” refers to communication that is performed between electronic devices. Although, in a broad sense, the term “M2M communication” refers to wired or wireless communication between electronic devices or communication between a device that is controlled by a human and a machine, the term has generally been used recently to indicate wireless communication between electronic devices, i.e., wireless communication between devices.
In the early 1990's when the M2M communication concept was introduced, M2M was considered a concept such as remote control or telematics and associated markets were greatly limited. However, in recent years, M2M communication has been continuously rapidly developed to create a new market that is attracting domestic and global attention. Especially, M2M communication has exerted a great influence upon fields such as Point Of Sale (POS) and fleet management in the security-related application market and a smart meter for automatically measuring the amount of consumed heat or electricity, measuring an operating time of construction equipment and facilities, and remote monitoring machines and facilities. In the future, M2M communication will be used for a wider variety of purposes, in combination with existing mobile communication and wireless high-speed Internet or low-power communication solutions such as Wi-Fi and ZigBee, and will no longer be limited to the B2B market, expanding into a B2C market.
In the M2M communication era, all machines equipped with a SIM card can transmit and receive data such that it is possible to remotely manage and control all such machines. For example, the application range of M2M communication technology is very broad such that M2M communication technology can be used for a great number of devices and equipment such as cars, trucks, trains, containers, vending machines, and gas tanks.
Terminals have been generally managed in individual units, and thus communication between a base station (BS) and a mobile station (MS) has been one to one communication. In such an environment, when considering numerous M2M terminals (or M2M devices), it is expected that the network would be overloaded due to signaling generated between each of the individual s and the base station. As stated above, when M2M communication is rapidly distributed and widely used, overhead due to communication between M2M terminals or communication between M2M terminals and the base station may become a problem.
Further, the base station of the mobile communication system now needs to allocate even the STID, which is allocated when entering the network, to the M2M terminal. However, rapidly increasing all M2M terminals cannot be supported with the STID having a size of 12 bits in the existing IEEE 802.16m system. However, a method for allocating the STID and transmitting a control channel for supporting massive devices has not been specifically suggested up to now.